Witt’s hands clench on the stone, its sharp edges digging into his fingers. “Ank is smooth with words, arguing that he held up his end of the bargain in that my men who crossed didn’t wet their heels.”
“Ank does what he must to keep a reviled people alive. Did you truly think we could take the army across the river—something no Pietra has done before—without losing a single man?”
“I had hoped.”
“They lost as many as we did. More, even. And yet they stood firm as we trod on them, some knowing their feet rested on the shoulders of drowned men.”
“Nilana says we do not have to cross like that again to attack,” Witt says. “There’s a shallow area near the beaches, a bar of sand below the water that will hold us if we step carefully, a few at a time.”
“Good to hear.” Pravin rises to go. “Give some thought to what I’ve said.”
“I always do, Mason,” Witt answers, eyes once again on the fires below and the rising voices of Feneen and Pietra so close in conversation he cannot tell one from the other.
CHAPTER 66
Dara
THE QUEEN SLEEPS IN HER SEAT, FINGERS ENTANGLED IN the dying king’s hair, while Dara keeps watch on his other side, face grim. Days have passed, days in which the linen beneath the king’s head has been soaked through many times, yet he lingers, his penchant for torturing those around him tenacious, even in death.
Dara watches the rise and fall of his chest, the movement barely noticeable, like a breeze that stirs leaves but not branches. She found him thus upon her return, and Dissa related the truth of the matter over the body that still clung to life. As the queen shifts in her sleep, her hand falls away from the pillow, soft palm facing upward. Dara studies it, her eyes unable to find the future there like Madda does, but adept at recognizing the present.
Dissa’s hands are delicate and soft, no calluses raised or scars marring their purity. Dara looks to her own hands, rough and gritty even now from days spent in the forest. Her fingernails are broken, dirt mired in the creases of her palms. She has never considered consulting Vincent’s Seer, though as a child, he always invited her with him to visit Madda.
She has always known her fate: doomed to wander in search of a mate for her body with her heart left behind, trapped in a castle it never belonged in.
Filj’s words fell heavy and wounded deeply. If there is no hope of an Indiri mate for Dara, she can follow her heart. Even if Stille will not see her on the throne, bastard children born of Stillean nobility will be looked after and cared for, her bloodline mixed with Vincent’s to endure until the sea decides otherwise. For too long, death has been all Dara has known how to dole out. In a world where destruction awaits them all, why should she not be with the one she loves while she can?
The king draws a ragged breath and holds it, pulling Dara’s eyes from her hands to watch as it slowly slips back out through his mouth, bringing a death rattle with it. Dara knows the sound, has heard it from animals and people alike, rising up from the battlefield like a dark miasma after blood has been spilled, or expelled in the woods with none but herself to hear.
“Dissa,” she says, reaching across the body to rouse the queen.
Her eyes open and go immediately to her husband, fingers resting in front of his lips to feel no passage of breath.
“He’s gone,” Dara says, and the queen nods, a hitching breath of her own stuck in her throat. She bends over the bed, silent tears falling on her husband’s face.
Dara slips through the door to the hall, and the guards on duty come to attention. “The king has passed,” she says to them. “Send for the Curator and the Elders.”
The taller guard shares a glance with his counterpart. “Perhaps we should see for ourselves before we rouse them.”
“I know a dead body when I see one,” Dara says, but the guard doesn’t move.
“My duty is to guard the royal family.” He looks down on her. “Not to take orders from Indiri.”
Dara’s lip curls, and she shoves him against the wall, his armor scraping her bare skin. “The royal family grows thin,” she growls. “Perhaps you’re not doing your duty so well.”
He doesn’t flinch, only smiles back at her coldly. “There’s still more of them than there are Indiri.”
Dara’s hand drops to her dagger, and she hears the other guard’s sword inch from its scabbard in warning. She backs away, and the guard she attacked adjusts his armor. “Gather the Elders yourself, girl,” he says.
Anger burns brightly, tearing through her innards and wanting release through the flash of metal, blade on blade, but she wrestles it down. She cannot die in a battle of pride, her blood spilled in a dark hall by men who don’t recognize its importance. Dara gathers her dignity and walks away, their guttural chuckling following her as she does.
She goes to the Curator, who sends a lower Scribe to fetch the other Elders. She hesitates before Vincent’s door, unsure whether she will have better luck trying to find him behind Khosa’s first. She raps her knuckles against the wood, heart slamming into her throat when she hears footsteps within. The door creaks open, and Vincent peers out.
“Dara?”
They have not spoken since she rejected him, only exchanged brief glances, their eyes bouncing off each other like sharp pieces of flint, sparks flying in their wake. He watches her now guardedly, and she feels keenly the hollow place inside her where their closeness used to be.
“Your father has passed,” she says without preamble, voice low.
Vincent opens the door all the way. “My mother?”
“She is with him.” Dara falls silent and they eye each other warily, unspoken words buried too deeply to mine at the moment. “I should return to her.”
Vincent nods curtly. “I’ll see you there,” he says before shutting the door again.
Dara studies the wood for a moment; her hand rises to knock again before reconsidering and turning back, the sconces casting her shadow long, head bowed in the only defeat she has ever known.
The outside air is a relief, coating Dara’s skin with a freshness she can never find indoors. The bottle of wine sweats in her hand, slipping through fingers already growing numb with drink. She doesn’t often seek solace in wine, but when she does, she takes no half measures. The bottle is much lightened, though the same could not be said of her spirits.
She leans against a tree in the gardens outside her own chambers, eyes on the full moon above. She returned to her room to retrieve her swords, meaning to gather with the family but remembering the challenge in the guard’s eyes. If she’d been wearing her swords, he would not have been so quick to mock her. Her reflection in the mirror caught her eye as she strapped them across her back.
Her hair was tousled, one side of her speckled face flushing pink where she’d brushed against a vase of salium in the hall in her haste to retrieve the Curator. The other side was much darker. Her spots had deepened during the long days she’d spent in the woods—the very escape she sought had marked her as one who did not belong in the castle.
With her swords she looked fierce as a gathering storm, wild as a night wind, and strong as an ancient tree. Every bit of her screamed Indiri, and the usual pride she felt was tinged with bitterness at the thought. She did not return to the king’s chambers to stand with the royal family, the blood flowing through their veins not her own. She did not want to see the quick private ceremony that would seal Vincent away from her forever.
She turns toward the tree, forehead pressed against the bark, the last of the wine burning down her throat. With Donil constantly shadowing the Given and Vincent doing the same, she has watched her life change—from trusted sibling to pestering nuisance, lifelong friend to stranger with whom awkward exchanges are made. Khosa has turned the two people she cares for most into ones she can only trade barbed or weighted words with.
It was unintentional,
she knows. The Given no more meant or wanted to turn their heads than a boulder in the stream means to turn the flow of water. Still, though the boulder lacks intention, the damage is done, and floods unleashed. Dara presses her palm against the tree, letting rough bark dig deep against her skin until it draws pain and the wine bottle drops from her fingers, shattering on stone. She doesn’t know what she is doing until the leaves touch her shoulders, the tree bowing as her anger draws its life.
“No!” she cries, slipping backward over shards of glass and landing hard. But the damage is done. The tree has wilted so badly that its branches scrape the ground with a gust of wind.
Dara crawls to it, wraps her arms around the trunk, and tries to push the life back inside, but she succeeds only in creating a springing moss that creeps up the dying bark. She drops her hands, leaving behind bloody prints from glass that sliced them open.
“I’m sorry,” she says, words slurred. She rests her head against the trunk and finds that not all her tears are yet shed. They fall from her eyelashes, drip from her chin, and are blown away along with the leaves.
CHAPTER 67
Khosa
I CRACK OPEN MY DOOR TO FIND MERRYL AND ROOK SHOULDER to shoulder, blocking my way.
“I can’t sleep. I was thinking of a walk,” I say.
They exchange a glance, and Merryl sags, the duty of denying me falling to him. “It’s best to stay in your room for now,” he says. “The king has passed, and though the castle is quiet for the moment, word will spread.”
I slide in between them, the flutter of my dressing robe snagging on Rook’s spear. “Then I should stretch my legs while I can,” I say over my shoulder.
I head toward Dara’s room. She’s swallowed my mind since I spoke with the Curator, the blaze of her eyes and indignant rise of her chin when I questioned the legitimacy of her Indiri memories keeping sleep from me. I know we will never be friends, but I can at least retract the words that made us enemies.
I pause at her door, and Merryl’s spear bars the way before I raise my hand to knock. “What is this madness, Khosa?”
“You heard the Curator the other day; I was wrong about Dara’s memories. She deserves an apology.”
“I also heard your fight with her,” Merryl counters. “You may trust her memories, but I don’t trust her temper. You owe her an apology, yes. But will she accept it, or even welcome one in the middle of the night?”
I strike the door twice, my knuckles rapping sharply. “We’ll find out.”
I hear movement within, and Dara’s voice calls out that the door is unlocked. When Merryl tries to follow me in, I stop him with a look.
“Some privacy, please,” I say.
“If your privacy costs a hair on your head, I’ll have hers off,” he says, eyes dark. “I’m serious, Khosa. I don’t trust the girl.”
I think of Donil’s face, so like his sister’s, and the few times I’ve seen Dara’s matching his, a blinding smile seen too little. “I do,” I tell him, and close the door on his disapproving face, Rook hovering at his shoulder.
A breeze strikes me, dead leaves scattering across the floor of Dara’s bedroom, their paths shooting in and out of long streaks of moonlight where one wall of her chambers is open to the outdoors, arches in full view of the sea.
“Dara?” I call, eyes adjusting to the darkness of her unlit room after the sconces of the hall.
“Over here,” she says, one hand rippling out into a stream of moonlight from where she sits in a corner. “I wasn’t expecting you at my door.”
Her words are rough and broken, and I’ve seen enough of the royal gatherings to know why. I go to her regardless, alarmed by drops of blood that fell when she motioned for me.
“What have you done to yourself?” I go to her, finally able to see her outline in a chair. I take one across from her, eyeing the dark drops on the stone.
“Accident,” she says, the single word drawn forth with effort.
“You should see a healer,” I say, taking her hand in mine without thinking. She doesn’t pull away, and instead of a cringe on my part I feel warmth, a draw not unlike the pulses that flow between Donil and me.
“No,” she says, trapping a dead leaf on the floor with a stomp of her foot. She picks it up by the stem, which breaks in her hand. “This was an accident.”
I don’t understand her words and so dismiss them as drunkenness, taking a lamp from her bedside out to the hall where I reassure my guards that Dara is in no mood to hurt me, and no shape besides. I return with the lamp lit from a sconce, not questioning why my steps are quick, my need to be beside her strong.
“Let me see,” I say, again drawing her hand into mine and thrilling at the touch. She lets me, but her eyes are hooded with mistrust.
I wash the slash on her hand with water from the basin, wrapping the drying linen around her palm. “I came to apologize,” I explain. “You were right, about the white cats in Philo’s time.”
“I never thought I was wrong.”
I tuck the edges of the linen in, raising my eyes to hers for the first time. They are bright, lit with an unnatural flame I’ve not seen before, but I feel something inside of me quicken at the sight. My hands rise to her face, like a child wanting to touch something pretty, and she jerks away.
“You’ve come to apologize, and now you’ve done it,” she says, rising to her feet. I go with her as if a string attaches us, she the puppeteer and I at her bidding. She doesn’t notice as she heads to the door, ready to see me out. I follow, fingers reaching out to touch her hair as it shifts in the wind.
She turns and smacks my hand away, dagger at the ready as if I’d meant harm. I laugh at the sight, a giddiness overwhelming me that I can’t explain and don’t care to. I spin around her, my dressing gown illuminated by moonlight, then lost in shadow as I do. Dara lowers her knife, brows drawn together as she backs away from me. I match her, step for step, taking her hands in mine.
“Dance with me,” I say, and my feet drum out a rhythm only they know as the surf calls to me from the open arches.
Dara closes her eyes, dimming the light I see there, and my feet still, a quick rush of terror filling me in the moment before she opens them again. Then I’m lost, a conviction so bright inside of me that I squeeze her hands tightly in mine, fresh blood running from beneath her bandage.
“Dance with me,” I whisper. She moves through an arch toward the sea as I follow, spinning.
“Oh, Khosa,” she says, eyes still bright yet brimming with sadness. “Why must you make it so easy?”
CHAPTER 68
Vincent
THE WIND SUCKS THE DOOR TO THE ROOM SHUT BEHIND the last Elder to arrive at my father’s deathbed, the wall sconces flickering in response. The Curator holds down the blank pages that he will fill with the details of my ascension, done quietly and with only a few witnesses.
Mother stands beside me, one hand on my shoulder. I do not know if I’m supporting her or she me. I followed Dara’s summons despite my urge to run the other way, and though my father’s bedchambers are large, the walls feel much too close, the air thick with the exhalations of old men seeing yet another Stillean take the throne.
The Curator clears his throat, dips his quill, and turns to the first page in the book that holds the words for the ceremony of coronation, said over countless Stilleans before me. He begins reading, and my eyes flick over the crowd, all of them silver haired and aging. Dara is not here. Donil has not come. I am surrounded by the weight of the accumulated years in the room, the very expectations of my Elders making their gazes heavy upon me.
Then, distantly, I hear a vein of life threaded under the intonations of the Curator, a youthful trill that trips through the air and brings a smile to my lips even in this dark hour. Khosa’s laugh.
I’m so pleased at the sound I don’t think to question it until movement outside the window c
atches my eye. I see her, a white shade on the beach, a spinning, glorious exultation of life dancing triumphantly toward her death, with Dara beside her.
I scream her name, throwing my mother’s hand from my shoulder and breaking through the ranks of the elderly, knocking them aside in a lunge toward the window. I have no care for my own life as I jump, ignoring the drop and the alarmed cries of the room I leave behind me. All I know is Khosa.
Khosa with the tide already at her feet.
CHAPTER 69
Khosa
I AM DANCING.
I am dancing.
I am dancing.
This is how it should be, and I laugh for the joy of it, the exultation that thrills my very bones as I spin toward Dara, the life raging in her eyes and the welcoming, wet arms of the sea behind her. Why I have denied it so long I do not know. I only want to leave the sand of the shore behind me and feel the sea buoy me up as I go, ever onward.
“Onward,” I yell, laughing at this, my newly discovered battle cry.
I spin and spin, my dressing gown now soaked with spray and sticking to my legs, my arms iridescent in the moonlight and the wind tearing my hair from my face. Dara is up to her waist in the sea, face twisted in disgust at the touch of the water but eyes still calling me forward.
And I go.
My name, splitting through the night, rending the incomprehensible song I’ve been singing. I shake it away and focus on Dara, on the wetness of the sea closing around my dancing feet.
I hear it again, in a different voice. A cry I can’t ignore, and pain that can hardly be borne. It feels as if my heart is being ripped through my back as my mind moves blankly onward, my body motionless in between.
Given to the Sea Page 28
